House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”

This is the fourteenth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this program, we highlight the media hatchet men who worked hand in glove with the intelligence community infiltrators set forth in our previous interview. Many of the hatchet men also worked with each other, as well as the intelligence community.

Most significantly, both the intelligence community infiltrators and the media hatchet men worked with Clay Shaw’s counsel and freely broke the law.

In addition to a CBS special that aired at the same time (1967), NBC broadcast an outright hatchet job on Garrison presided over by Walter Sheridan. A veteran of the intelligence community, Sheridan had worked for the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and was a principal figure in counter-intelligence for the National Security Agency. As will be seen below, Sheridan reputedly had strong, deep connections to CIA itself.

. . . . The conventional wisdom about Walter Sheridan places him as a former FBI man; reportedly he worked at the Bureau for about four years. . . .

. . . . Sheridan’s ties to the intelligence community, beyond the FBI, were wide, deep, and complex. He himself said that, like Guy Banister, he had been with the Office of Naval Intelligence. Then, after he left the bureau, Sheridan did not go directly to the Justice Department. He moved over to the newly established National Security Agency. This was a super-secret body created by President Truman in 1952 both to protect domestic codes and communications and to gather intelligence through cracking foreign codes. It was so clandestine that, for a time, the government a tempted to deny its existence. Therefore, for along time, it operated inalmost total secrecy. Neither the Congress nor any fedreal agency had the effective oversight to regulate it. . . .

. . . . It is relevant to note here that General David Sarnoff, founder of NBC, worked for the Signal Corps during World War II as a reserve officer. In 1944, Sarnoff worked for the complete restoration of the Nazi destroyed Radio France station in Paris until its signal was able to reach throughout Europe. It was then retitled Radio Free Europe. He later lobbied the White House to expand the range and reach of Radio Free Europe. At about this point, Radio Free Europe became a pet project of Allen Dulles. Sarnoff’s company, Radio Corporation of America, became a large part of the technological core of the NSA. During the war, David’s son Robert worked in the broadcast arm of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Robert was president of RCA, NBC’s parent company, at the time Sheridan’s special aired. David was chairman. . .

Sheridan also presided over an ostensibly “private” investigative institution which was, in fact, a CIA front. It is worth noting that Beurt Ser Vas–an alumnus of the Three Eyes–purchased The Saturday Evening Post, which published an anti-Garrison hit piece by James Phelan. (This is highlighted below.)

. . . The company was International Investigators Incorporated, nicknamed “Three Eyes.” According to a Senate investigator, “it was owned lock, stock, and barrel by the CIA.” Two of the original principals, George Miller and George Ryan, were, like Banister, former G-men who later went to work for CIA cover outfits. According to another source, not only was Sheridan the liaison to Three Eyes, he “disposed over the personnel and currency of whole units of the Central Intelligence Agency out of the White House.” By 1965 . . . Three Eyes was taken over by two former CIA officers. One of them, Beurt Ser Vaas, later purchased the Saturday Evening Post. . . .

Exemplifying Sheridan’s methodology was the treatment meted out to Fred Leemans, who was the climactic person interviewed by Sheridan in his special. Note the open intimidation of Leemans and his family, threatening them if they did not perjure themselves, betray Garrison, and cooperate with both Sheridan and Clay Shaw’s counsel!

This is reminiscent of the treatment of Marlene Mancuso detailed in our previous interview.

. . . . One of the more startling declarations that the ARRB uncovered was an affidavit by a man named Fred Leemans. Leemans was a Turkish bath owner who originally told garrison that a man named Clay Bertrand had frequented his establishment. Leemans was the climactic interview for Sheridan’s special. He testified on the show that the DA’s office had actually approached him first, that he never knew that Shaw used the alias Bertrand, that everything he had previously said to the DA’s office were things he was led to say by them, and that they had offered to pay him 2,500 dollars for his affidavit in which in which he would now say that Shaw was Bertrand and that Shaw came into his establishment once with Oswald. In other words, all the things Novel had been saying in his public declarations about Garrison were accurate. At the end of his interview, Leemans told Sheridan and the public that everything he had just revealed on camera was given to NBC freely and voluntarily. Leemans even said that he had actually asked Sheridan for some monetary help but Sheridan had said he did not do things like that.

In January of 1969, Leemans signed an affidavit in which he declared the following as the true chain of events:

“I would like to state the reasons for which I appeared on the NBC show and lied about my contacts with the District Attorney’s office. First, I received numerous anonymous threatening phone calls relative to the information I had given to Mr. Garrison. The gist of these calls was to the effect that if I did not change my statement and state that I had been bribed by Jim Garrison’s office, I and my family would be in physical danger. In addition to the anonymous phone calls, I was visited by a man who exhibited a badge and stated that he was a government agent. This man informed me that the government was presently checking the bar owners in the Slidell area for possible income tax violations. This man then inquired whether I was the Mr. Leemans involved in the Clay Shaw case. When I informed him that I was, he said that it was not smart to be involved because a lot of people that had been got hurt and that people in powerful places would see to it that I was taken care of. One of the anonymous callers suggested that I change my statement and state that I had been bribed by Garrison’s office to give him the information about Clay Shaw. He suggested that I contact Mr. Irvin Dymond, attorney for Clay L. Shaw and tell him that I gave Mr. Garrison the statement about Shaw only after Mr. Lee [Garrison’s assistant DA] offered me 2,500 dollars. After consulting with Mr. Dymond by telephone and in person, I was introduced to Walter Sheridan, investigative reporter for NBC, who was then in the process of preparing the NBC show. Mr. Dymond and Mr. Sheridan suggested that I appear on the show and state what I had originally told Mr. Dymond about the bribe offer by the District Attorney’s office. I was informed by Mr. Dymond that should the District Attorney’s office charge me with giving false information as a result of the statement I had originally given them, he would see to it that I had an attorney and that a bond would be posted for me. In this connection, Mr. Dymond gave me his home and office telephone numbers and and advised me that I could contact him at any time of day or night should I be charged by Garrison’s office as a result of my appearing on the NBC show. My actual appearance on the show was taped in the office of Aaron Kohn, Managing Director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, in the presence of Walter Sheridan and Irvin Dymond.”

This is one of the most revealing documents portraying the lengths to which Sheridan would go in tampering with witnesses. It also demonstrates that Shaw’s lawyers—Bill and Ed Wegmann, Irvin Dymond, and Sal Panzeca—knew almost no boundary in what kind of help they would accept to win their case. Third, it reveals that Shaw’s lawyers had access to a network of attorneys that they could hire at any time for any witness they could pry loose from Garrison. Because, as the declassified ARRB documents reveal, there was a CIA cleared attorney’s panel that was at work in New Orleans. Attorneys that the Agency vetted in advance so they would be suitable for their covert use and could be trusted in their aims. The fact that Shaw’s lawyers were privy to such CIA secret knowledge, and wee utilizing it, shows just how willing and eager they were to indulge themselves in covert help—and then lie about it. . . .

In addition to Sheridan, James Phelan and Hugh Aynesworth joined the media chorus attacking Garrison, and both of them networked with the intelligence community as well. Phelan’s hit piece was published in the Saturday Evening Post, which was eventually bought by CIA veteran Beurt Ser Vas, an alumnus of the Sheridan-linked Three Eyes intelligence front.

House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”

This is the thirteenth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

This broadcast highlights the infiltrators into Jim Garrison’s investigation: how they subverted his inquest, networked with intelligence elements implicated in the assassination, networked with media hatchet men who lambasted Garrison publicly and also Clay Shaw’s defense team.

Discussion begins with a Denver oil man named John King, who made an oblique offer of an appointment to the Federal Bench, an apparent carrot to persuade Garrison to drop his probe into the Kennedy assassination. As a Garrison aide noted, the stick would follow.

A synoptic overview of the infiltrators, what they did and with and for whom:

1.–William Martin, who infiltrated Garrison’s team, apparently on behalf of CIA.
2.–Bernardo DeTorres, a Bay of Pigs veteran and CIA operative with connections to Mitchell Werbell, a silenced weapons expert best known as the inventor of the Ingram Mac 10 and Mac 11 silenced machine pistols. DeTorres was filing reports on Garrison with the CIA’s JM/Wave station in Miami and was apparently in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963. CIA operative Eladio Del Valle–David Ferrie’s case officer on some missions–was found dead shortly after Ferrie. Del Valle was found tortured, shot through the heart and with his head split open with a machete. The corpse was a short distance from DeTorres’ apartment. DeTorres was also allegedly involved with the assassination of Orlando Letelier.
3.–William and Louis Gurvich, two “private investigators” who infiltrated Garrison’s office and, among other things, began channeling information about Garrison’s probe to Walter Sheridan, about whom we will have more to say later. William stole Garrison’s investigative file and gave it to Clay Shaw’s defense team. William Gurvich continued to work with Clay Shaw’s defense through 1971 (Shaw was charged with perjury). Gurvich may well have worked for CIA. His work with Shaw is in keeping with a Richard Helms directive summarized in item #6 below.
4.–Bill Boxley worked to steer Garrison’s investigation into dubious areas. When Garrison’s team visited Boxley’s apparent place of residence, it appeared not to have ever been occupied by Boxley. Boxley carried a number of briefcases with him when working with Garrison, growing larger with time. It appeared that he was purloining documents from Garrison’s office. Eventually, he called Garrison, warning that “we” are coming to get you.
5.–Tom Bethell, an Englishman and an assassination expert, met with Sal Panzeca, one of Clay Shaw’s attorneys and gave him a list of Garrison’s witnesses and summaries of what each was expected to say.
6.–Pershing Gervais was recruited to ensnare Garrison in a purported scandal after the Clay Shaw trial, in keeping with Richard Helms’ directive that the CIA take steps to neutralize Garrison and any effect that he might have before, during and after the Clay Shaw trial. He decamped to Canada, to be beyond Garrison’s legal reach, working at a job at General Motors secured for him by The Powers That Be. Later, he admitted his perfidy.
7.–One of the most important infiltrators was Gordon Novel, a veteran CIA officer, brilliant electronics expert and operational associate of many of the people involved in Garrison’s probe. Novel had been involved with the Bay of Pigs and an arms burglary at a Schlumberger facility, some of the loot from which was stored at a racing business owned in part by Novel. Operating at the direction of Allen Dulles, he infiltrated Garrison’s investigation and bugged his office for the Agency. He also networked with the FBI to monitor Garrison’s probe. Novel also used his position inside Garrison’s probe to smear Garrison in public statements to the media. Novel was able to draw on large financial reserves, the source of which is–technically speaking–opaque. At one point, he had five attorneys working on his behalf. That, in and of itself, would have required more money than Novel appeared to have at his disposal. Most significantly, Novel worked in tandem with Walter Sheridan, a veteran intelligence operative who produced an altogether “special” for NBC about the Garrison investigation. We will discuss Sheridan at greater length in our next interview.

The heavy handedness of the pressure placed on those who cooperated with Garrison is illustrated by the experience of Marlene Mancuso, Novel’s estranged wife. Note the coordination of operations between CIA officer Novel and people working with Walter Sheridan, as well as Sheridan himself.

. . . . Marlene Mancuso was Novel’s estranged wife. She had been talking to Garrison. He had detailed knowledge of Gordon’s Agency activities with people like Ferrie and Sergio Arcacha Smith. Plus she was fully informed about the transfer of arms from the Schlumberger bunker for the Bay of Pigs. In May of 1967, [Rick] Townley found her working as a cashier in the [French] Quarter at a place called Lucky Pierre’s. Townley told her bluntly that Garrison was going down. They wanted her to say, on camera, that the DA had coerced her into giving him testimony about the Schlumberger munitions transfer. When that did not work, a friend of Gordon’s called and warned her about facing federal perjury charges if she did not turn on Garrison. Finally, Sheridan showed up in person. He also said that Garrison was going down the drain, and she was going with him. But if she would talk to him, he would get her a job at NBC. This also failed. So Sheridan started following her around. Once he followed her to church. His excuse was that he wanted to say a prayer inside. One day, both Sheridan and Townley showed up at her front door. They said they were looking for Gordon. The net day, Townley called her and said if she did not get away from Garrison, she could get killed. Mancuso did not turn on Garrison. She signed a statement for the DA revealing the threats and extortion by Townley and Sheridan. . . .

House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”

This is the twelfth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this program, we continue with analysis of Clay Shaw’s intelligence connection, beginning with review of his work for the Domestic Operations Division.

A fascinating intelligence involvement of Shaw’s is his work with Permindex.

. . . . The next step in the CIA ladder after his high-level overseas informant service was his work with the strange company called Permindex. When the announcement for Permindex was first made in Switzerland in late 1956, its principal backing was to come from a local banker named Hans Seligman. But as more investigation by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Henry Schroder Corporation. This information was quite revealing. Schroder’s had been closely associated with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s connections to the Schroder banking family went back to the thirties when his law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, first began representing them through him. Later, Dulles was the bank’s General Counsel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA director, Schroder’s was a repository for a fifty million dollar contingency fund that Dulles personally controlled. Schroder’s was a welcome conduit because the bank benefited from previous CIA overthrows in Guatemala and Iran. Another reason that there began to be a furor over Permindex in Switzerland was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was associated with the Third Reich, specifically Heinrich Himmler. The project now became stalled in Switzerland. It now moved to Rome. In a September 1069 interview Shaw did for Penthouse Magazine, he told James Phelan that he only grew interested in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in October 1958. Yet a State Department cable dated April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great interest in Permindex from the outset.

One can see why. The board of directors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fascist governments, people who worked the Jewish refugee racket during World War II, a former member of Mussolini’s cabinet, and the son-in-law of Hjalmar Schacht, the economic wizard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These people would all appeal to the conservative Shaw. There were at least four international newspapers that exposed the bizarre activities of Permindex when it was in Rome. One problem was the mysterious source of funding: no one knew where it was coming from. Another was that its activities reportedly included assassination attempts on French Premier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the founding member of Permindex, Ferenc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of former French officers who broke with De Gaulle over his Algerian policy. They later made several attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mysterious source of funding, plus the rightwing, neo-Fascist directors created another wave of controversy. One newspaper wrote that the organization may have been “a creature of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the transfer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal political-espionage activities.” The Schroder connection would certainly suggest that. . . .

His involvement with Permindex places him in the transnational corporate milieu that spawned fascism and Nazism. Key observations about Permindex and Shaw’s participation in it:

1.–Shaw was part of the deep political orbit of the Dulles brothers and Sullivan & Cromwell.
2.–The Permindex operational link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himmler Kreis, the industrialists and financiers who financed the workings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, who became the finance minister of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles brothers.
4.–Permindex was apparently involved with the OAS efforts to assassinate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a network including: Banister investigator Maurice Brooks Gatlin, who boasted of having transferred money to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS operative who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assassination of JFK.
5.–As discussed in FTR #’s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an early critic of the French policy in Algeria, criticizing it on the floor of the Senate in 1957.

The conclusion of the broadcast focuses largely on the CIA’s intense interest in the Garrison investigation. This interest was manifested through an agency conclave informally named “The Garrison Group.”

. . . . Helms wanted the group to “consider the possible implications for the Agency” of what Garrison was doing in “New Orleans before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw. It is crucial to keep in mind the phrase: before, during, and after. As we will see, the effective administrator Helms was thinking not just of some short term fix, but of formulating a strategy for the long haul. According to the very sketchy memo about this meeting, [CIA General Counsel Lawrence] Houston discussed his dealings with the Justice Department and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA directly. [Ray] Rocca then said something quite ominous. He said that he felt “that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meeting. Since everyone must have known that Rocca had developed, by bar, the largest database on Garrison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .

We note that House Select Committee on Assassinations assistant counsel Jonathan Blackmer wrote the following:

. . . . “We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.” . . . .

The program concludes with analysis of Clay Shaw’s close relationship to the Stern family of WDSU. In addition to carrying staged interviews between Oswald and Carlos Bringuier, the broadcast outlet pilloried Jim Garrison and his trial of Clay Shaw.

This is the eleventh of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this broadcast, we explore the association of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw in the context of the planning of assassination plots against JFK, as well as Shaw’s involvement with the intelligence community.

David Ferrie had a desk in the office of C. Wray Gill, a lawyer for Carlos Marcello. When another of Gill’s clients–a woman named Clara Gay–was in the office, she witnessed another Ferrie assassination schematic on November 26, 1963:

. . . . Clara looked over at Ferrie’s desk and she saw what looked like a diagram of Dealey Plaza: it was a drawing of a car from the perspective of an angle from above, the car was surrounded by high buildings, reminiscent of Dealey Plaza. After the secretary threw it out, Clara retrieved it. She said it should be given to the FBI or Secret Service. The secretary took it back and a pulling contest ensued. The secretary eventually won, but not before Clara saw the words “Elm Street” on the diagram. She later reconstructed this experience for Garrison. She said she came forward because she considered herself a good citizen, and Ferrie must have been something evil . . . .

After discussion of the Ferrie Dealey Plaza assassination schematic, the discussion turns to a conversation witnessed by Perry Russo, one of Garrison’s most important witnesses.

Key points of information about what Russo witnessed:

1.–Present at the meeting where the discussion took place were: Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald and several Cubans.
2.–Shaw was using one of his most common aliases–“Clay Bertrand.”
3.–Ferrie became increasingly agitated and highlighted “triangulation of crossfire” as necessary to assure a kill shot on Kennedy.
4.–Ferrie and Shaw discussed the necessity of being somewhere else, to give themselves “cover.” This led Russo to conclude that the plans were concrete not theoretical.
5.–Ferrie said he would be in Hammond, LA., on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana. He was, in fact, there on the day of the assassination.
6.–Shaw said that he would be on the West Coast. He was, in fact, at the San Francisco Trade Mart, where he was to give a talk. When news of of the assassination reached Shaw and his host, Shaw seemed remarkably detached. When asked if he thought the talk should go forward in light of the news, Shaw said yes. This struck those around him at that time as curious.

The issue of Shaw’s aliases is an important one. The day after the assassination of JFK, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews got a call from “Clay Bertrand,” requesting that he represent Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. Andrews had previously encountered Shaw using the same alias when seeking legal representation for some gay Latinos.

Key aspects of Andrews’ contact with Shaw/Bertrand:

1.–Andrews feared for his life if this came to light. He claimed to have been told, after calling Washington D.C., that he might get a bullet in the head if he talked.
2.–After Andrews changed his testimony, Garrison charged him with perjury, eventually gaining a conviction.
3.–Andrews’ statements about Shaw/Bertrand were bolstered by someone at the VIP lounge at the Eastern Airlines terminal at New Orleans airport, who knew Shaw to sign in under that alias.
4.–Numerous people in bars and bistros–particularly in the French Quarter–knew that Shaw used that alias. Because of Garrison’s crackdown on organized crime-related operations in New Orleans, his potential informants remained silent.

When being booked, Shaw actually stated that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”

Shaw was booked by a New Orleans police officer named Aloysius Habighorst–who had an excellent record. When being booked, Shaw stated that he used the alias “Clay Shaw.” Before testifying at Shaw’s trial, Habighorst’s car was rammed by a yellow truck, and he was injured.

The concluding portion of the broadcast deals with Clay Shaw’s intelligence connections. Key points of information in that regard:

1.–Shaw’s intelligence connections date to World War II, when he worked as a aide-de-camp to General Charles Thrasher. This placed him in the Special Operations Section, a branch of military intelligence and one which was involved with recruiting some of the Paperclip personnel to work for the U.S.
2.–After the war, he became involved with International House, a Rockefeller-linked operation deeply involved with the transnational corporate community.
3.–His work for the International Trade Mart followed logically on the heels of his work for International House.
4.–Shaw also worked with the Mississippi Shipping Company, which did a lot of work with the CIA.
5.–His “Y” file indicated that Shaw’s work for CIA involved conferring with the agency before traveling to Latin America, not after he returned as was the case for most informants.
6.–At least one of Shaw’s files with the CIA was destroyed.

One of the most important elements of Shaw’s intelligence career was uncovered by researcher Peter Vea, whose disclosures were supplemented by some interesting commentary by Victor Marchetti.

. . . . Peter Vea discovered a very important document while at the National Archives in 1994. Attached to a listing of Shaw’s numerous contacts with the Domestic Contact service, a listing was attached which stated that Shaw had a covert security approval in the Project QKENCHANT. This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, meaning that Shaw was an active covert operator for the CIA while Garrison was investigating him. When William Davy took this document to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, an interesting conversation ensued. As Marchetti looked at the document, he said, “That’s interesting . . . . He was . . . He was doing something there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert security clearance for domestic contacts service. He then added, “This was something else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the Clandestine Services.” When Davy asked what branch of Clandestine Services would that be, Marchetti replied, “The DOD (Domestic Operations Division). It was one of the most secret divisions within the Clandestine Services. This was Tracey Barnes’s old outfit. They were getting into things . . . Uh . . . exactly what, I don’t know. But they were getting into some pretty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was working for at the time.” And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clearance issued to him in 1970 while he was working at the White House. . . .

The tenth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this broadcast, we delve into operational links between U.S. intelligence agent David Ferrie–the first target of Garrison’s investigation–and Clay Shaw, who was tried by Garrison.

One of the operations in which Ferrie and Shaw participated was an effort to bolster Freeport Sulphur.

. . . . In Chapter 1, the author introduced Freeport Sulphur and its subsidiaries Moa Bay Mining and Nicaro Nickel. These companies all had large investments in Cuba prior to Castro’s revolution. And this ended up being one of the ways that Garrison connected Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. This came about for two reasons. First, with Castro taking over their operations in Cuba, Freeport was attempting to investigate bringing in nickel ore from Cuba, through Canada, which still had trade relations with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at another plant in Braithwaite. Shaw, an impressario of international trade, was on this exploratory team for Freeport. And he and two other men had been flown to Canada by Ferrie as part of this effort. More evidence of this connection through Freeport was found during their investigation of Guy Banister. Banister apparently knew about another flight taken by Shaw with an official of Freeport, likely Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Ferrie. Another reason this Freeport connection was important to Garrison is that he found a witness named James Plaine in Houston who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sulphur had contacted him in regards to an assassination plot against Castro. Considering the amount of money Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the number of Eastern Establishment luminaries associated with the company–such as Jock Whitney, Jean Mauze and Godfrey Rockefeller–it is not surprising that such a thing was contemplated within their ranks. . . .

One of the most important, compelling links between Ferrie and Shaw was their appearance with Lee Harvey Oswald in Clinton, Louisiana. Key points of information about this event:

1.–The three men–Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald–were in Clinton to register Oswald to vote.
2.–In the event, their arrival placed them in the middle of a large voter-registration drive for local African-Americans, part of the civil rights movement of the early ’60’s.
3.–The three men were very conspicuous at this event, not only because of their race, but because the large, black Cadillac driven by Shaw attracted considerable attention.
4.–Many of those in attendance at the voter registration drive, as well as the local sheriff, identified the three men.
5.–Ferrie, in particular, manifested a striking appearance. He was afflicted with an ailment that caused all of the hair on his body that to fall out. To cover up his affliction, Ferrie wore a garish red wig and matching, penciled-on eyebrows.
6.–Oswald was apparently at the voter registration event to register to vote in that area, in order to gain employment at the nearby East Louisiana State Hospital, an institution with strong links to Tulane Medical Center and Alton Ochsner, as well as to the MK Ultra experiments going on at that time.
7.–Two people Oswald apparently cited as references were Malcolm Pierson and Frank Silva. Not only did both men work at the hospital, but they both had interesting CV’s.

. . . . The obvious question then becomes: How did Oswald know the names of these men? Or if he did not, how did Shaw or Ferrie know them? One possibility is this: According to Cuban intelligence, Silva was active in the anti-Castro cause in the New Orleans area. Silva was Cuban-born and from an upper-class family. He was actually associated with Tulane Medical Center at the time. Tulane was located in New Orleans. Dr. Alton Ochsner, who was on the board of, and Chief of Surgery at, Tulane Medical School, was a friend of both Shaw and Banister. In fact, at the New Orleans Public Library, there is a photo of Shaw sitting at a small table with Ochsner.

Another way that Oswald could have known these names was through a mutual acquaintance of Shaw and Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith. Both Cuban intelligence and Garrison’s investigators discovered that there was a connection between the two Cuban refugees. Dr. Robert Heath, Chairman of Tulane University Medical School’s Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, became infamous for using LSD and electrode implantation in his research. Many of the people he worked on came from East Louisiana State Hospital, where an entire ward was dedicated to his work. East doctor Alfred Butterworth (whom this author interviewed shortly before his death) told the author that he had seen both Ochsner and Silva while he was there. Butterworth also revealed that Tulane University had a special psychiatric unit at the hospital, where they secretly administered LSD. This is important background to the following information. During his inquiry, Jim Garrison came across a witness who had attended a gathering at Dr. Heath’s home. Thee, the following event occurred: Dr. Silva introduced the man to the former local representative of Howard Hunt’s CRC, Sergio Arcacha Smith. Pierson was a former narcotics offender, who, according to HSCA subpoenaed records, listed Silva as a reference in his job application. It is hard to believe that, left to his own devices, Oswald would have known that either of these men worked at the hospital. If either of these more logical options is accurate, it gives the incident even more scope and depth. . . .

The program concludes with discussion of what a Garrison investigator called “The Bomb”–an apparent plan, with detailed schematics, to assassinate JFK. NB: Mr. Emory mistakenly links Clay Shaw to “The Bomb.” Shaw was, according to credible testimony involved with Ferrie in another, probably connected, association to discuss killing Kennedy.

The ninth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this interview, we proceed into the substance of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination. Garrison’s inquiry began immediately after the assassination when former Guy Banister investigator Jack Martin gave information to him about one of his cronies in the “detective agency.”

David Ferrie was a veteran intelligence officer with a long CV. Ferrie’s intelligence resume and behavior with regard the JFK assassination includes:

1.–His work with a Civil Air Patrol unit that included Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as Barry Seal, another future CIA operative who became a major player in the Iran-Contra drug traffic.
2.–Ferrie’s CAP unit’s profound relationship with the military, permitting his unit to operate at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and to fly on military aircraft. This indicates strong gravitas on Ferrie’s part within the national security establishment.
3.–His strange trip to Texas on the day of the assassination, driving all night through a heavy rainstorm to–take your pick–go ice skating and/or go goose hunting. The manager of the skating rink stated that Ferrie did not go ice skating but stayed by a pay phone all of the time he spent there. His companions stated that they did not bring guns on the trip. Ferrie spent his time in Galveston (a Texas port city) in a hotel overlooking the sea.
4.–Ferrie marketing his untenable ice skating/goose hunting story to the FBI–an act of perjury on his part.
5.–Ferrie also stated that he didn’t know how to fire a rifle, a claim fundamentally at odds with Ferrie’s work as a paramilitary commando trainer at the CIA camps at LaCombe, Louisiana.
6.–Immediately after the assassination, Ferrie frantically sought to recover any photographs of him with Lee Harvey Oswald in his CAP unit.
7.–Immediately after the assassination, Ferrie worried that his library card might be in Oswald’s possession. Oswald knew about “microdots,” a technique developed by German intelligence in World War II permitting the reduction of an intelligence communication to microscopic size, thus enabling its insertion into a period or comma in a sentence. Some researchers have opined that the library card may have involved some use of microdot technology in the Ferrie/Oswald intelligence relationship.
8.–Ferrie, Oswald and Guy Banister were all deeply involved with the CIA’s anti-Castro Cuban effort in New Orleans. Banister’s office was a front for many of the weapons used by Ferrie and company at the LaCombe camp and other facilities. As discussed previously, Oswald’s one man Fair Play For Cuba Committee (New Orleans chapter) was housed in the same Newman building that housed Banister’s operation.
9.–Ferrie had operational connections with both Eladio Del Valle and Sergio Arcacha Smith, two of the CIA’s primary anti-Castro Cuban operatives.
10.–Against the background of JFK’s Cuban policy, including JFK’s actions vis a vis the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, his impending diplomatic rapprochement with Castro and the Justice Department’s closing down of the LaCombe camp and others like it, Ferrie began making increasingly violent statements about JFK.
11.–Ferrie began openly talking about killing Kennedy. His violent anti-JFK statements were one of the reasons he was dismissed from Eastern Airlines, for whom he worked as a pilot.

. . . . As Mongoose began to dwindle down, Ferrie, and others, now grew even more resentful of Kennedy. For the first time, Ferrie mentioned to a young protege a design to do away with JFK. But he never included himself in the plans. He talked about it in the second or third person. Sometimes, he went further and said that Kennedy “ought to be shot.” This was also echoed by Guy Banister who had been a CIA conduit of funds for the training camps. In 1963, Banister bitterly complained to a colleague that “someone should do away with Kennedy.” Banister’s fascist ideology was conducive to such things. . . .

After Garrison indicted him, Ferrie began publicly attacking Garrison’s credibility, ridiculing any notion of his own guilt in the assassination. In private, Ferrie began expressing fear for his life. As it developed, Ferrie’s fears were well founded. His naked corpse was found in his apartment, allegedly felled by a berry aneurism at the base of his brain. A sheet was pulled up over his face, and there were two typed suicide notes, with his name typed, not signed.

There are a number of considerations in connection with Ferrie’s death:

1.–If his death was natural, why were there two typed suicide notes?
2.–If it was suicide, how did he die?
3.–There were marks in Ferrie’s mouth, clearly revealed in autopsy photos. Might they have indicated that drugs been forced down his throat? Ferrie had been taking proloid, which might well have produced the lethal reaction Ferrie experienced in the event of an overdose. He had ordered thyroid pills, which were gone when his body was discovered.
4.–Journalist George Lardner had interviewed Ferrie, and claims he was with Ferrie until 4am, the last possible time that Ferrie’s death could have occurred. If Lardner was right, the killers must have entered within minutes of his departure.
5.–Decades later, Lardner, working for the CIA-linked Washington Post, went to Dallas to shadow Oliver Stone’s filming of “JFK,” based on Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins. Lardner then wrote a hit piece on Stone’s film before it was released.

The contents of Ferrie’s apartment were unusual. Recall that he had stated that he didn’t know how to fire a rifle.

. . . . The contents of Ferrie’s apartment at the time of his death were unusual for a private investigator. They included a blue, 100-pound aerial bomb, a Springfield private investigator. They included a blue, 100-pound aerial bomb, a Springfield rifle, a Remington rifle, an altered-stock, .22 rifle, 20 shotgun shells, two Army Signal Corps telephones, one bayonet, one flare gun, a radio transmitter unit, a radio receiver unit, 32 rifle cartridges, 22 blanks, several cameras, and three rolls of film. . . .

Shortly after Ferrie’s death, his close associate Eladio Del Valle was found murdered, near the apartment of Bernardo De Torres, Bay of Pigs veteran and U.S. intelligence veteran. Del Valle had been tortured, shot through the heart and his head had been split open with a machete.

The eighth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues analysis of the development of the legend (intelligence cover) of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(Listeners can order Destiny Betrayed and Jim’s other books, as well as supplementing those volumes with articles about this country’s political assassinations at his website Kennedys and King. Jim is also a regular guest and expert commentator on Black Op Radio.)

The discussion begins with review of the deep state intelligence connections of Ruth and Michael Paine, who took over the handling of the Oswalds from George De Mohrenschildt:

1. Michael Paine was a Cabot and drew from trust funds bequeathed by both the Cabot and Forbes families, both members of the “Boston Brahmins.” His mother was Ruth Forbes Young.
2. Michael’s cousin Thomas Cabot was a director United Fruit.
3. Thomas’s brother John was–like Thomas–a State Department veteran, who was exchanging information with Guy Banister employee Maurice Brooks Gatlin about the impending CIA overthrow of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, who was pursuing policies detrimental to United Fruit’s feudal monopoly in that unfortunate nation.
4. During the early sixties, Thomas was president of the Gibraltar Steamship Company, a Honduran-based front that owned no ships but operated Radio Swan, a CIA radio station used in the Bay of Pigs, among other operations.
5. Before relocating to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, Michael Paine had worked for the Franklin Institute, a CIA conduit.
6. Michael Paine also was apparently posing as a leftist to infiltrate and catalog, Castro sympathizers, not unlike the work Guy Banister was doing in New Orleans in conjunction with, among others, Lee Harvey Oswald.
7. His step father was Arthur Young, married to Ruth Forbes Young. Arthur Young was a devotee of “The Nine” and became a major figure at Bell Helicopter. Arthur got Michael a job at Bell.
8. Ruth Forbes Young was best friend with Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles’s subordinate and long-time mistress while he worked for OSS, America’s World War II intelligence service.
9. Ruth Paine’s father was William Avery Hyde, an insurance executive who had worked for the OSS in World War II and later went to work for the Agency for International Development, a frequent CIA cover.
10. Ruth’s father, like George De Mohrenschildt, worked for the International Cooperative Alliance.
11. In the summer of 1963, Ruth traveled cross-country and visited her sister Sylvia Hyde Hoke, who was a CIA psychologist.
12. Sylvia’s husband John Hoke also worked for the Agency for International Development.
13. In the 1980s, Ruth Paine was apparently infiltrating and cataloging anti-“Contra” activists with regard to the attempts at overthrowing the Sandinista forces in Nicaragua.
The Paines–Ruth in particular–played a decisive role in the shaping of the circumstances leading to Lee being framed for the JFK assassination.

Among the operations performed by the Paines:

1. Ruth separated Lee and Marina, bringing a pregnant Marina back to Dallas while Lee was in New Orleans and then facilitating Lee’s stay at a rooming house after he returned to Dallas.
2. Ruth got Lee his job at the Texas School Book Depository, despite the fact that Lee had actually received a better job offer. It was Lee’s employment at the TBSD that was the foundation for framing him for the assassination.
3. Ruth may well have been the person who got the phone call communicating the better-paying job offer to Lee. It does not appear that she told Lee about the offer.

The disinformation used to frame Oswald for the assassination stemmed in considerable measure from what we might call “Ruth Paine’s garage sale.”

Many of Oswald’s effects were stored in Ruth Paine’s garage after his return to Dallas from New Orleans. Ruth Paine’s garage eventually yielded:

1. The ludicrous picture of “Oswald” posing with two Communist magazines and the weapons he supposedly used to kill JFK and Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippitt. The shadows under “Oswald’s” chin and behind his body go in different directions, indicating that Oswald’s head had been superimposed on the body posed for the picture. In addition, “Oswald’s” body tilts in a ludicrous fashion. (See the photo at right.) This photo did much to convince a naive public that Oswald had been the assassin.
2. The cameras found in Ruth Paine’s garage were not consistent with the film used to take the “Leaning Tower of Oswald” photograph.
3. Ruth Paine’s garage sale yielded the “evidence” that Oswald–who supposedly killed a liberal President–had also tried to kill the right-wing General Walker. This included an apparently forged note incriminating Oswald, which had neither Lee’s nor Marina’s fingerprints on it.. This was spun in such a way as to neuter any notion that Oswald was a politically motivated killer. In this program, Jim recapitulates some of the facts that negate the hypothesis that Oswald fired at Walker, including eyewitness accounts of two men firing and driving away (Oswald didn’t drive), the fact that the marksmanship required to hit a seated Walker would have been far less difficult than the matchless firing skill required to have done what Oswald had allegedly done in Dallas and discrepancies in the ballistics and munition evidence in the Walker shooting.
4. A silver bracelet supposedly purchased by Oswald in Mexico City which provides supporting “physical evidence” of Oswald’s alleged presence in the important Mexico City visit.
5. There was a package found in Ruth Paine’s garage, addressed to Oswald and from George Bouhe, one of the White Russians involved with the handling of the Oswalds in the Dallas area. There was an address sticker pasted on the package, and yet the FBI made no effort to determine the address under the sticker. Why? Furthermore, the package contained wrapping paper consistent with the paper the Warren Commission said Oswald used to bring the Mannlicher/Carchano into the Texas School Book Depository. Had Oswald opened the picture and handled the paper, he would have left fingerprints which would have corroborated the official cover-up.
6. In the context of the previous item, it is noteworthy that George Bouhe lived next door to, and shared a swimming pool with, Jack Ruby!
Next, the program pivots to New Orleans DA Jim Garrison and his investigation of the JFK assassination.

One of the calumnies used to discredit Garrison is the allegation that he engaged in his investigation of David Ferrie, Clay Shaw et al in order to further his career–that he was ambitious. And yet, as Jim notes, Garrison TURNED DOWN opportunities to become Lieutenant Governor (of Louisiana), Attorney General, a Senator and also to acquire lucrative banking interests. All of those goals were forsaken so that Garrison could pursue his investigative career, including and especially the JFK assassination.

Another lie that has been used to discredit Garrison is the allegation that he highlighted the CIA’s role in the JFK assassination in order to eclipse the Mafia’s role in it and, in so doing, protect what are said to be his Mob associates.
Destiny Betrayed destroys that allegation as well, chronicling the fact that Garrison vigorously prosecuted organized crime figures in New Orleans and was known to have factored Mob participation in the JFK assassination in his investigation.
Mr. Emory read into the record a passage which not only refutes the Mafia smearing of Jim Garrison, but provides an interesting peek into the account of the trial to come. After noting racketeer influence on judges who had obstructed Jim Garrison’s activities, Jim writes:

. . . . The insinuation about racketeer influences had some underpinning. Two of Garrison’s assistants had drinks with one of the judges, Judge Haggerty, who would preside over the Clay Shaw trial. Haggerty introduced them to Francis Giordano. Giordano was a Carlos Marcello associate. He complained to them that when Dowling took away their illegal gaming machines, he returned them. Garrison did not. “How Come,” Giordano asked? . . . .

The seventh of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues analysis of the development of the legend (intelligence cover) of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(Listeners can order Destiny Betrayed and Jim’s other books, as well as supplementing those volumes with articles about this country’s political assassinations at his website Kennedys and King. Jim is also a regular guest and expert commentator on Black Op Radio.)

The program begins with review and further development of some of “Communist traitor” Lee Harvey Oswald’s curious associations upon his (apparently unobstructed) return to the United States.

Having threatened to commit treason by disclosing classified information about U.S. air operations, (the U-2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Secretary General of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. Originally called the Committee of Subjugated Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an integral part of the Reinhard Gehlen spy outfit, a key element of the former World Anti-Communist League, and an important part of the Republican Party. It is unthinkable that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intelligence and the FBI.

In fact, Jim mentioned in our previous interview that a former CIA officer Donald Deneselya told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the CIA did, in all likelihood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, however, sought to distance itself from the JFK assassination fall guy.

When the supposed Marxist traitor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the virulently anti-Communist White Russian community in the Dallas/Fort Worth, themselves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.

Among the people with which the Oswalds networked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his wife, the former Princess Sherbatov, a member of the Romanov Royal family!
2. Peter Gregory.
3. Paul Raigorodsky.
4. George Bouhe.
5. George DeMohrenschildt. DeMohrenschildt was part of the family that managed the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Konstantin Maydell, in charge of Abwehr operations in the United States for a time (Abwehr was German military intelligence); was a suspected Nazi spy in World War II; was an associate of George H.W. Bush; was a longtime CIA asset; was a petroleum geologist.

DeMohrenschildt implemented the Oswalds’ introduction to the White Russian milieu in Dallas. Of particular significance for our purpose is the fact that he made contact with the couple at the suggestion of J. Walton Moore, who was the primary CIA officer in the Dallas area!

The White Russians appeared to be working to separate Marina and Lee, and were involved in handling Marina after the assassination.

A long-standing CIA asset, DeMohrenschildt had worked with the agency on numerous projects in Yugoslavia, Haiti and elsewhere. Suspected of having spied on the Aransas Pass Coast Guard Station (in Texas) for the Third Reich, DeMohrenschildt was the cousin of Baron Kontantin Maydell, who oversaw Abwehr operations in the U.S. for a time. (The Abwehr was German military intelligence.)

As discussed in FTR #712, we highlighted DeMohrenschildt’s links to former CIA director George H.W. Bush, for whom CIA headquarters is named. In that same program, we covered Bush’s involvement in the JFK assassination. Like DeMohrenschildt and many of the White Russians who associated with the Oswalds in the Dallas area, Bush had roots in the petroleum industry.

Noteworthy in the context of Oswald’s presence in Dallas, is that this alleged traitor was employed by Jaggars, Chiles and Stovall, a firm that did classified work for the military, including projects associated with the U-2 spy plane! That the “traitor” Oswald, who offered to disclose classified information about the U-2 and U.S. aviation operations to the Soviets could be employed by such a firm is unthinkable, IF we are to take the official version of Oswald at face value.

Ultimately, DeMohrenschildt handed the Oswalds–Lee and Marina–off to the “Quaker liberals” Michael and Ruth Paine.

In Destiny Betrayed, Jim details the remarkable pedigree of both Michael and Ruth Paine and their deep heritage at the heart of the power elite and the derivative intelligence establishment:

1. Michael Paine was a Cabot and drew from trust funds bequeathed by both the Cabot and Forbes families, both members of the “Boston Brahmins.” His mother was Ruth Forbes Young.
2. Michael’s cousin Thomas Cabot was a director United Fruit.
3. Thomas’s brother John was–like Thomas–a State Department veteran, who was exchanging information with Guy Banister employee Maurice Brooks Gatlin about the impending CIA overthrow of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, who was pursuing policies detrimental to United Fruit’s feudal monopoly in that unfortunate nation.
4. During the early sixties, Thomas was president of the Gibraltar Steamship Company, a Honduran-based front that owned no ships but operated Radio Swan, a CIA radio station used in the Bay of Pigs, among other operations.
5. Before relocating to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, Michael Paine had worked for the Franklin Institute, a CIA conduit.
6. Michael Paine also was apparently posing as a leftist to infiltrate and catalog, Castro sympathizers, not unlike the work Guy Banister was doing in New Orleans in conjunction with, among others, Lee Harvey Oswald.
7. His step father was Arthur Young, married to Ruth Forbes Young. Arthur Young was a devotee of “The Nine” and became a major figure at Bell Helicopter. Arthur got Michael a job at Bell.
8. Ruth Forbes Young was best friend with Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles’s subordinate and long-time mistress while he worked for OSS, America’s World War II intelligence service.
9. Ruth Paine’s father was William Avery Hyde, an insurance executive who had worked for the OSS in World War II and later went to work for the Agency for International Development, a frequent CIA cover.
10. Ruth’s father, like George De Mohrenschildt, worked for the International Cooperative Alliance.
11. In the summer of 1963, Ruth traveled cross-country and visited her sister Sylvia Hyde Hoke, who was a CIA psychologist.
12. Sylvia’s husband John Hoke also worked for the Agency for International Development.
13. In the 1980s, Ruth Paine was apparently infiltrating and cataloging anti-“Contra” activists with regard to the attempts at overthrowing the Sandinista forces in Nicaragua.

The sixth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues analysis of the development of the legend (intelligence cover) of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(Listeners can order Destiny Betrayed and Jim’s other books, as well as supplementing those volumes with articles about this country’s political assassinations at his website Kennedys and King. Jim is also a regular guest and expert commentator on Black Op Radio.)

In FTR #1035, we set forth the suspicious circumstances surrounding Oswald’s “defection” to the Soviet Union:

• A number of aspects of his tenure the Soviet Union suggest that, not only was he there as a spook, but the Soviets knew that he was there to spy. Among the noteworthy aspects of his Soviet sojourn that are set forth in this program:
• Oswald was given a hardship discharge with just a few months remaining on his enlistment tour. He got this in an inordinately short amount of time. He was supposed to take care of his mother, and yet his brother Robert was there to care for her, making Lee’s presence there unnecessary.
• Oswald booked his steamship passage from the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, headed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Garrison’s trial.
• Oswald ostensibly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer College, an obscure Swiss institution that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
• He defected to the Soviet Union from Helsinki, Finland. His stay there raises several questions, including the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, luxury hotel.
• After leaving the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kurki, another high-end institution. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these institutions is a mystery–he did not have enough money in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
• His selection of Helsinki is significant, also, because the Soviet Embassy there was the only one that could issue a travel visa to the Soviet Union in a little more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?
After reviewing the curious aspects of the beginning Oswald’s “defection” to the Soviet Union, the program notes many aspects of his stay in the U.S.S.R. that strongly suggest he was there as an undercover intelligence operative.
After leaving from the curiously convenient departure point of Helsinki, Finland, Oswald met an agent from Intourist, the Soviet state travel agency. Once again, the circumstances surrounding Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union are suggestive of an intelligence cover, a “legend.”

1. Meeting with his Intourist guide, Oswald indicated that he had secret information about U.S. air operations that he wished to share with Soviet intelligence.
2. After being denied residence in the U.S.S.R. Oswald was involved in an apparently “phony” suicide attempt, which was almost certainly an attempt to remain in the U.S.S.R. longer than his travel visa would have permitted. Were the Soviets on to him? It seems altogether probable.
3. Oswald was housed at the Metropole Hotel, which Soviet intelligence outfitted with sophisticated surveillance technology, indicating suspicion on their part.
4. Oswald was interviewed by U.S. Embassy officer Richard Snyder, who had strong links to U.S. intelligence, including a program at Harvard to vet students for intelligence-connected travel to the U.S.S.R. One of the students he oversaw was Zbigniew Brzezinski.
5. Snyder appears to have “handled” Oswald in such a way that he would never cease being a U.S. citizen. Once again, Oswald repeated his intent to give secret intelligence about U.S. air operations to Soviet intelligence, most likely a reference to the U-2 project.
6. Oswald was sent to Minsk, where he was put to work in a radio factory, after being afforded more-than-comfortable living circumstances by Soviet authorities.
7. Oswald submitted a detailed, 30-page paper on the radio factory that appears to have been an intelligence report on the installation.
8. Also while in the U.S.S.R., Oswald gave interviews to journalists, including Priscilla Johnson MacMillan, who was a “willing CIA asset.” In that interview, Oswald gave a performance which could only be described as a hackneyed manifestation of a stereotyped Marxist/Communist.
9. The handling of Oswald’s files in the corridors of U.S. intelligence are more than a little strange. Despite having threatened to open a treasonous breach in the security of U.S. air operations, no 201 file was opened on Oswald, and his documentation at Langley was routed to James Angleton’s files on the false defector program. This was unthinkable. As we will see in future discussion, the circumstances surrounding the FBI’s FLASH classification on Oswald–which would have sounded an alert upon this ostensible traitor’s re-entry into the U.S.–is also out of the ordinary. Recall the unusual treatment afforded State Department officer Otto Otepka in connection with inquiries into Oswald and the false defector program. This was highlighted in FTR #1035.
10. While in the U.S.S.R. he met Marina Prusakova (later Marina “Oswald”), who may very well have been a Soviet intelligence agent.
11. Marina lived with her uncle, who was an officer with the MVD, the Soviet equivalent of the FBI.
12. Marina interacted with Robert Webster, another apparent “phony” defector from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. Webster had worked for the CIA-linked RAND corporation. It is highly unlikely that she would have interacted with both Oswald and Webster as a matter of coincidence.
13. Marina also discussed having entertained Afghanistan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, again, indicative of a probable intelligence link on Marina’s part.
14. Further burnishing Marina’s probable intelligence connections is the fact that she was proficient in the English language, both spoken and written. The notion that she would have needed an interpreter, as she is alleged to have required in post-assassination inquiries.
15. Marina’s probable intelligence connection and the probability that she was assigned to Oswald dovetails with the situation of Richard Case Nagell. While in Japan, Oswald came in contact with Richard Case Nagell, a deep-cover intelligence officer assigned to play a double agent. Eventually, Nagell was assigned by his [ostensible] Soviet handlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pretext for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Unable to talk Oswald out of engaging in the associations with which he was connected, Nagell–who had infiltrated the New Orleans anti-Castro Cuban milieu in which Oswald was entrenched, shot up a Texas bank in order to get himself put in prison, saying he did not want to become a traitor. Nagell is the focal point of the remarkable book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell, who was interviewed in FTR #54.
16. The rapidity and ease with which Oswald and Marina were granted permission to leave the Soviet Union together also suggests that she may have been performing an intelligence function. Normally, it might have taken some years for a Soviet woman who had married an American to obtain permission to emigrate.

After getting back to the United States, the connections and activities of the Oswalds continue to be “passing strange,” IF one takes the legend of the so-called assassin at face value.

Having threatened to commit treason by disclosing classified information about U.S. air operations, (the U-2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Secretary General of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. Originally called the Committee of Subjugated Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an integral part of the Reinhard Gehlen spy outfit, a key element of the former World Anti-Communist League, and an important part of the Republican Party. It is unthinkable that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intelligence and the FBI. In fact, Jim mentions that a former CIA officer Donald Deneselya told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the CIA did, in all likelihood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, however, sought to distance itself from the JFK assassination fall guy.

When the supposed Marxist traitor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the virulently anti-Communist White Russian community in the Dallas/Fort Worth are, themselves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.
Among the people with which the Oswalds networked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his Wife, the former Princess Sherbatov, a member of the Romanov Royal family!
2. Peter Gregory.
3. George Bouhe, who will figure prominently in our next program.
4. George de Mohrenschildt, who we will examine at length in our next interview. De Mohrenschildt was part of the family that manged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Konstantin Maydell, in charge of Abwehr operations in the United States for a time (Abwehr was German military intelligence); an associate of George H.W. Bush; a longtime CIA asset; a petroleum geologist.

The fifth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program begins analysis of the development of the legend (intelligence cover) of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(Listeners can order Destiny Betrayed and Jim’s other books, as well as supplementing those volumes with articles about this country’s political assassinations at his website Kennedys and King. Jim is also a regular guest and expert commentator on Black Op Radio.)

This week’s discussion begins with a synopsis of the career of James Jesus Angleton, the long-time CIA chief of counterintelligence. Long pre-occupied with the matter of defectors from the Soviet Union, Angleton undertook a program of running false defectors to the U.S.S.R. in order to gain better intelligence about that nation.

The number of “defectors” to the Soviet Union expanded exponentially, leading State Department officer Otto Otepka to query the CIA as to which of them were genuine defectors, and which were actually left-cover spooks. One of the defectors about which he inquired was Lee Harvey Oswald, and a CIA reply about Oswald was marked “SECRET.”

Otepka’s career nosedived after this.

Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978-1-62087-056-3; pp. 164-165.
. . . . He was first taken off of sensitive cases. Stories began to appear in the press that his job could be eliminated. He was asked to take another position in State but he declined. He was then called before a Senate Committee to explain his methods for issuing security clearances. This happened four times in less than three years. He still would not resign or suspend his defector investigation. Spies, phone taps, and listening devices were then planted in his office. His office started to be searched after hours and his trash was scoured for any of his notes. Even his house was being surveilled. Otepka could not understand what was happening to him. He could only conclude that the sensitive study of American defectors hidden in his safe was behind it all. That safe was later drilled into after he was thrown out of his original office and reassigned. Whoever drilled it then used a tiny mirror to determine the combination. The safecracker then removed its contents. On November 5, 1963 Otepka was formally removed from his job at State. Later on, author Jim Hougan asked him if he had been able to figure out if Oswald was a real or false defector. Otepka replied, “We had not made up our minds when my safe was drilled and we were thrown out of the office.” Just two and a half weeks after his forcible departure from State, Oswald, the man he had studied for months on end, was accused of killing President Kennedy. . . .

Against the background of the false defector program, we begin analysis of Oswald, the Marxist Marine.

As we have discussed in other programs and posts, in his teens, Oswald was part of a Civil Air Patrol unit commanded by David Ferrie, the long-time intelligence officer and the first focal point of Jim Garrison’s investigation. (As chronicled by Daniel Hopsicker, that same unit also contained Barry Seal, the longtime CIA pilot and a key player in the Iran-Contra related drug trafficking.)

Interestingly and significantly, as Oswald and his fellow CAP cadets were gaining operational access to military bases–suggesting some significant connections to military and CIA by leader Ferrie–Oswald began to express and pursue alleged Communist/Marxist/Soviet inclinations to some high school peers. At the same time, he was also giving voice to a desire to join the military.

Eventually, Oswald joined the Marines. During his tenure in the Marine Corps, his pro-Marxist/pro-Soviet leanings and his security status both escalated:

1. Training at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, Oswald got a Security Clearance.
2. He eventually was stationed at Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan, from which the CIA-connected U-2 spy plane flew. Bear in mind that Oswald’s Marxist/Communist professions continued apace during this time.
3. Oswald was actually in charge of physical security for the U-2 at one point in his tour of duty at Atsugi–remarkable for a self-professed Marxist.
4. While in Japan, he came in contact with Richard Case Nagell, a deep-cover intelligence officer assigned to play a double agent. Eventually, Nagell was assigned by his [ostensible] Soviet handlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pretext for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Nagell is the focal point of the remarkable book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell, who was interviewed in FTR #54.
5. CIA officer, anti-Castro lynchpin and future Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt also turned up in Japan at the same time as Oswald, operating in close proximity to the U-2 operations.
6. During his Marine Corps tenure, Oswald stated to associate David Bucknell that he would go to the Soviet Union on an undercover intelligence operation and return a hero. Bucknell stated that Oswald was no Communist.
7. Another Marine associate of Oswald’s–Jim Botelho–also said Oswald was no Communist and that, if he had been, Botelho would have taken violent action against him.
8. Oswald had access to sensitive radar information pertaining to the U-2 project and also knew the radio codes for his base. After his “defection” to the U.S.S.R., he was the talk of the base. Nonetheless, the radio codes were not changed.
9. The lone associate of Oswald who corroborated his dubious Marxist credentials–Kerry Thornley–turned up later in New Orleans, networking with Oswald and the other players in Oswald’s apparent pro-Castro activities. We will cover this in future broadcasts.
10. While in the Marines, Oswald developed a proficient command of the Russian language–a difficult tongue to master. He appears to have attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.
11. Oswald was a lousy shot in a branch of the service–the Marines–that placed a premium on marksmanship. Labeled a “shitbird” by his fellow Marines for his lack of proficiency with a rifle, Oswald lacked the extraordinary marksmanship required to do what he allegedly did in Dallas.

The circumstances of Oswald’s “defection” to the Soviet Union are suspicious as well:

1. Oswald was given a hardship discharge with just a few months remaining on his enlistment tour. He got this in an inordinately short amount of time. He was supposed to take care of his mother, and yet his brother Robert was there to care for her, making Lee’s presence there unnecessary.
2. Oswald booked his steamship passage from the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, headed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Garrison’s trial.
3. Oswald ostensibly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer College, an obscure Swiss institution that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
4. He defected to the Soviet Union from Helsinki, Finland. His stay there raises several questions, including the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, luxury hotel.
5. After leaving the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kurki, another high-end institution. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these institutions is a mystery–he did not have enough money in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
6. His selection of Helsinki is significant, also, because the Soviet Embassy there was the only one that could issue a travel visa to the Soviet Union in a little more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?